Bill Nelson: “I am going to vote for Judge Roberts as Chief Justice. I will be making a lengthy statement later on in the day as there…”

“I am going to vote for Judge Roberts as Chief Justice. I will be making a lengthy statement later on in the day as there is time allowed, since the time allocated right now under the previous order is very limited. However, I did want to take this opportunity to say, with the fresh memories of Katrina and now Rita, I think it is incumbent upon us to finally get our collective heads as Americans out of the sand and face up to the fact that we are dependent on foreign energy sources, and that since we cannot drill our way out of the problem because the development of those resources of oil would take years and years to complete, one of the great natural resources of this country is coal. Of course, that does not affect my State of Florida; we have 300 years of reserves of coal, and we now have the technology to cook this coal with highly intense heat in what is known as a coal gasification project. It burns off the gas, and that is a clean-burning gas. It would be my hope that this country will start getting serious about weaning ourselves from dependence on foreign oil by using our technology to address this problem. So that is what I wanted to share with my colleagues, since there were a couple of minutes under the previous order, and then I will be making my statement about Judge Roberts later in the day. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.”